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Tag: Amazon Web Support

  • Amazon Web Services Lowers Prices, Expands Support

    Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud services company, announced today that it has expanded its free support and lowered its prices for premium support plans. Amazon’s support offerings have also been renamed to reflect the new changes.

    The Basic support plan is the free service for all AWS customers. It now includes 24-hour support by email or phone for billing and account issues, as well as tech support. This is in addition to the access customers get to the AWS Developer Forums, technical FAQs, AWS Service Health Dashboard, and other self-help support features.

    What was previously the “Bronze tier” for customer support is now called the Developer support plan. It costs $49 per month and comes with all of the features of the Basic plan, plus a guaranteed 12-hour response time for support cases and one-on-one support for AWS questions. Bronze customers also gain access to AWS support engineers during local business hours.

    The “Gold tier” has now been renamed the Business support plan, and its price has been reduced from $400 to only $100 per month. Also, a 3% pricing tier has been added to the existing tiers of 5%, 7%, and 10%. Business plan members get the benefits of the lower tiers, plus a one-hour support case response time and support engineers available at any time through chat, email, or phone. In addition, Business plan members will get the new service that Amazon is heavily emphasizing: AWS Trusted Advisor. The new service monitors a customer’s services and notifies them when an optimization could be made to save money.

    “Amazon has been passionate about customer service since we started the company 17 years ago,” said Brent Jaye, general manager of AWS Support. “Putting customers first is part of our DNA. We not only employ talented support engineers all over the world, but also build technology that enables them to provide proactive and helpful information to our customers. Our new Trusted Advisor program is a good example of that — we use technology to determine if customers have security adjustments they should make, or if they’re not architected as fault tolerant as they might want to be, or if they have under-utilized instances that they can terminate and save money. We then use both technology and support professionals to surface this information to customers.”

    The high-end “Platinum tier” is now the Enterprise support plan, and it comes with a 15-minute response time for “mission-critical issues” and a dedicated account manager. Of course, this is in addition to all of the previous tiers’ benefits, including Trusted Advisor. The Enterprise plan now has the same usage-based pricing tiers as the Business plan: 3%, 5%, 7%, and 10%.

  • Amazon Web Services Lowers Premium Tier Prices and Expands Free Support

    Today, Amazon Web Services announced free support for all customers and a price drop on premium service packages.

    They are also introducing a number of new features that will help their clients increase performance, close security gaps, keep them better informed, and save them money.

    Their support engineers are available 24 hours a day, and offer assistance with an unlimited number of cases. The support offering have also been renamed to more closely reflect challenges their clients face.

    Brent Jaye, General Manager of Amazon Web Services comments on the change in price structure for support services:

    “Amazon has been passionate about customer service since we started the company 17 years ago,”

    “Putting customers first is part of our DNA. We not only employ talented support engineers all over the world, but also build technology that enables them to provide proactive and helpful information to our customers. Our new Trusted Advisor program is a good example of that — we use technology to determine if customers have security adjustments they should make, or if they’re not architected as fault tolerant as they might want to be, or if they have under-utilized instances that they can terminate and save money. We then use both technology and support professionals to surface this information to customers.”

    Here’s a look at the revised service tiers:

    * Basic (Expanded free tier): Upon signup for AWS, all customers are automatically enrolled in Basic support for free. Added features in this tier include immediate, around-the-clock access to customer service by email or phone for billing and account issues, and technical support for system health issues. Customers continue to have access to technical FAQs, best practices guides, the AWS Service Health Dashboard, and the AWS Developer Forums, which are monitored and responded to by AWS support engineers.

    * Developer ($49/month and 1:1 customer support): Previously called the Bronze tier, the Developer tier includes all components of the Basic tier, plus the following: 12-hour response time to support cases submitted, 1:1 customer support for any AWS-related question, and access to AWS Technical Support Engineers via email through the AWS online support center during local business hours to help configure, operate, and maintain core AWS services and features. The Developer plan is $49 per month.

    * Business (Access to AWS Trusted Advisor): Previously called the Gold tier, the Business tier includes all components of the Basic and Developer tiers, plus the following: one-hour response time to support cases submitted and support engineers available 24/7 via phone, chat or email. In addition to chat capabilities, new features include access to AWS Trusted Advisor, a program that monitors AWS infrastructure services, identifies customers’ usage patterns, and notifies customers when opportunities exist to save money, improve system performance, or close security gaps. Customers also receive support for the most common third-party software running on AWS. The Business tier minimum pricing has been reduced from $400 to $100 per month and a 3% usage-based pricing tier has been added to the existing pricing tiers of 10%, 7%, and 5%.

    * Enterprise (New pricing based on usage vs. flat fee): Previously called the Platinum tier, the Enterprise tier provides customers with all of the features of the Business tier, plus 15-minute response time for mission-critical issues, and a dedicated Technical Account Manager who is intimately familiar with the customer’s specific AWS architecture. Technical Account Managers will also conduct periodic business reviews for infrastructure planning, report metrics, collaborate on launches, and connect customers to AWS Solutions Architects as needed. The Trusted Advisor program is also available to all Enterprise tier customers. The Enterprise tier minimum pricing has been reduced from a flat 10% usage fee to usage-based pricing tiers of 10%, 7%, 5% and 3%.

    Here’s a little about what Amazon Web Services is and what they provide:

    Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began exposing key infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services — now widely known as cloud computing. The ultimate benefit of cloud computing, and AWS, is the ability to leverage a new business model and turn capital infrastructure expenses into variable costs. Businesses no longer need to plan and procure servers and other IT resources weeks or months in advance. Using AWS, businesses can take advantage of Amazon’s expertise and economies of scale to access resources when their business needs them, delivering results faster and at a lower cost. Today, Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of enterprise, government and startup customers businesses in 190 countries around the world. AWS offers over 28 different services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). AWS services are available to customers from data center locations in the U.S., Brazil, Europe, Japan and Singapore.